US advertisers are expected to spend around $1.68 billion placing adverts on social networking platforms in 2010, with half being spent on Facebook. According to the latest predictions made by research firm eMarketer, the amount spent on social media advertisements will rise by 20 per cent to from last year to $1.68 million.

A slew of technology related terms have joined the latest edition of the Oxford English dictionary, earning their place amongst the 2,000 new words to enter the OED this year. Amongst the more surprising entries are the words "Interweb" which joined the dictionary nearly twenty years after it first appeared and describes an alternative way of saying "Internet" and "phrase dictionary attack" which is the process of using a dictionary to crack open password protected systems.

The acquisition of McAfee by Intel is one of the biggest such moves in the last couple of years and may well trigger a new wave of M&A, a sign that the economy is returning back to normal. However, Wall Street has been puzzled by the move by the Semiconductor giant; shares of Intel fell significantly today as analysts and financial companies scramble to understand the motive behind the sudden move.

Subscribers to People magazine can now access its digital counterpart on their iPads. Apple has approved an exclusive application for its App Store to allow subscribers of People magazine’s print version an access to its digital version on their iPad.

Facebook Places, the platform's recently launched location based feature, uses the old version of Bing Maps, despite Microsoft having updated it more than two weeks ago.